The three scenes, shot on the streets of Seattle last year, compose some of the milder footage in Bumfights 2: Bumlife, the recently released sequel to the infamous Bumfights: Cause for Concern, the underground video of homeless people fighting, smoking crack, defecating, performing dangerous stunts, and being bound and gagged by a safari-clad "Bumhunter" (mimicking Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin). The original Bumfights generated national outrage and was denounced on the floor of Congress--and also reportedly sold more than 300,000 copies, largely over the web, at $20 apiece after its April 2002 release. Shock jock Howard Stern publicized the video on his radio show, and the video received extensive coverage on Fox News and other media outlets, which eagerly touted Bumfights as they claimed to condemn it.
Film-school dropout Ray Laticia, 25, a Las Vegas resident who produced the Bumfights videos with partner Ty Beeson, defends them as "basically harmless," though he admits he doesn't personally find the footage very compelling. "To be frank, it's sort of juvenile, lowbrow stuff, and I don't find much entertaining on it," he says. "It's a bizarre phenomenon that so many people like it." The two, who have earned millions from the videos, came up with the idea as a means of raising money to fund a more mainstream feature film, which they are now on the verge of finishing, he says.
The National Coalition for the Homeless has already condemned the Bumfights sequel, and would like to see such videos banned. Donald Whitehead, the group's executive director, describes the videos as "blatant exploitation" and says he is "outraged" by their success. He believes the films contribute to violence against the homeless, describing an Australian case in which kids who murdered a homeless man cited Bumfights as an inspiration. The videos are now banned in that country, and at least two others.
Local bigwigs are also unamused. Seattle City Council President Peter Steinbrueck, active in homelessness issues, says he had not seen the videos, but finds the idea of them "appalling," "sick," and "perverse."
The original Bumfights did not go unnoticed by authorities. Four young men from the San Diego area who contributed footage to the initial Bumfights were charged with a total of seven felonies last year, but eventually pled guilty to misdemeanors and were sentenced to probation and community service. Several of the homeless people in the original video have brought civil suits against the filmmakers, still pending, though Laticia says one of those suits is about to be settled. While Laticia says the filmmakers got a little "sloppy" making the original, he does not believe there will be any legal issues regarding the sequel: "We do everything within the boundaries of the law."
Aside from the Seattle scenes, Bumfights 2 contains new Bumhunter scenes, a takeoff on Cops in which masked men pretending to be police officers handcuff and berate homeless men, a segment in which crack addicts dive into a pool to retrieve baggies of rock cocaine (which they then smoke), ostensible "crack whores" flashing their breasts, and innumerable scenes of street fights.
There is more to come. Bumfights 3 will be released in about a month, Laticia says, and will include more Seattle scenes, including a junkie shooting up his pet muskrat with heroin.
